A former school bus driver accused of having sex with two 17-year-old students was indicted by a grand jury Monday.

Kwanda Carpenter, 33, faces two charges of sexual activity with a student by school personnel.

She was arrested in January and put on paid suspension from her job as a bus driver for Bessemer City High School.

Since her Jan. 16 arrest, the Bessemer City woman has been released from jail on bond and assigned a public defender, attorney Rocky Lutz.

A Gaston County grand jury handed down indictments Monday, deciding there was sufficient cause to take Carpenter to trial on two charges of sex acts with a student.

Police say Carpenter, who is married, picked up the two teenagers around 10 p.m. on their street and engaged in a sexual activity with both of them, police said. The boys could not remember the exact date, although warrants list Oct. 3 as the date of offense, according to detectives.

The sexual activity did not occur at school nor on the school bus, but rather in the bus driver’s private car on a dead-end road near the boys’ homes, police said.

Carpenter did not force the two boys to have sex, but sexual contact between a school employee and a student remains against the law, according to police.

The two students broke the law when they tried to force Carpenter to pay hush money.

According to arrest warrants, Malik Ty Mel Moore and Donja Phillips, both 17, sent messages to Carpenter and threatened “to call the police and report that she had raped them if she didn’t give them money.”

The two Bessemer City High School students used Facebook to try to extort $60 from Carpenter, police said. Each has since been charged with blackmail.

The sexual misconduct came to light when Carpenter reported the Facebook threat to the school resource officer on Jan. 11.

The threat came to Carpenter sometime in early January, Gaston County police said.

Carpenter only drove a school bus for Bessemer City High School. She started at the school in October 2010 and earned $12.91 an hour, according to school officials. She was fired two days after her arrest.

You can reach reporter Diane Turbyfill at 704-869-1817 and twitter.com/GazetteDiane.